this article is located at the following web address:
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-tradedforbats&prov=ap&type=lgns
Minor leaguer traded for 10 baseball bats
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer May 23, 7:51 pm EDT
McALLEN, Texas (AP)—During three years in the low minors, John Odom never really made a name for himself.
That sure changed this week—he’s the guy who was traded for a bunch of bats.
“I don’t really care,” he said Friday. “It’ll make a better story if I make it to the big leagues.”
For now, Odom is headed to the Laredo Broncos of the United League. They got him Tuesday from the Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League for a most unlikely price: 10 Prairie Sticks Maple Bats, double-dipped black, 34-inch, C243 style.
“They just wanted some bats, good bats—maple bats,” Broncos general manager Jose Melendez said.
According to the Prairie Sticks Web site, their maple bats retail for $69 each, discounted to $65.50 for purchases of six to 11 bats.
“It will be interesting to see what 10 bats gets us,” Melendez said.
The Canadian team signed Odom about a month ago, but couldn’t get the 26-year-old righty into the country. It seems Odom had a “minor” but unspecified criminal record that wasn’t revealed to immigration officials before they scanned his passport, Vipers president Peter Young said.
Odom said the charge stemmed from a fight he was in at age 17. Although he thought it had been expunged from his record, it popped up during immigration.
Odom spent hundreds of dollars driving to the Canadian border and staying at a Montana hotel while the matter was sorted out. He then drove to Laredo after the trade.
Originally from Atlanta, Odom was drafted late by the San Francisco Giants in 2003. He pitched 38 games, all in Class A, from 2004-06, and was released by the organization this spring.
Laredo intends to activate Odom on Monday and have him make his first start Wednesday.
Odom said he was supposed to be traded for Laredo’s best hitter. But when that player balked at moving to Calgary, the bats entered the deal.
Laredo offered cash for Odom, but Young said that was “an insult.”
The bat trade wasn’t the first time Calgary came up with some creative dealmaking. The Vipers once tried to acquire a pitcher for 1,500 blue seats when they were renovating their stadium, Young said.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
i'm talking to my friend chris on the fone.
the following article is located at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080516/ap_on_el_pr/huckabee_obama
Huckabee quips about gun aimed at Obama
By BRETT BARROUQUERE, Associated Press Writer Fri May 16, 6:01 PM ET
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Republican Mike Huckabee responded to an offstage noise during his speech to the National Rifle Association by suggesting it was Barack Obama diving to the floor because someone had aimed a gun at him.
Hearing a loud noise and interrupting his speech, Huckabee said: "That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he — he dove for the floor."
There were only a few murmurs in the crowd after the remark.
The Obama campaign had no comment.
Huckabee, who sought the GOP presidential nomination, won the leadoff Iowa caucuses and seven other states. But he dropped out after Sen. John McCain, the likely nominee, piled up a series of big victories. An ordained Baptist minister, Huckabee attracted strong support among religious conservatives.
He and former GOP candidate Mitt Romney addressed the NRA convention Friday as did McCain.
Huckabee's comments came during a nearly 20-minute speech in which he suggested gun education should start early. He also criticized the Democratic presidential candidates, saying neither Obama nor rival Hillary Rodham Clinton would fight to defend an individual's right to own a gun.
"I'm not sure Senator Obama or Senator Clinton really get it," Huckabee said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080516/ap_on_el_pr/huckabee_obama
Huckabee quips about gun aimed at Obama
By BRETT BARROUQUERE, Associated Press Writer Fri May 16, 6:01 PM ET
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Republican Mike Huckabee responded to an offstage noise during his speech to the National Rifle Association by suggesting it was Barack Obama diving to the floor because someone had aimed a gun at him.
Hearing a loud noise and interrupting his speech, Huckabee said: "That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he — he dove for the floor."
There were only a few murmurs in the crowd after the remark.
The Obama campaign had no comment.
Huckabee, who sought the GOP presidential nomination, won the leadoff Iowa caucuses and seven other states. But he dropped out after Sen. John McCain, the likely nominee, piled up a series of big victories. An ordained Baptist minister, Huckabee attracted strong support among religious conservatives.
He and former GOP candidate Mitt Romney addressed the NRA convention Friday as did McCain.
Huckabee's comments came during a nearly 20-minute speech in which he suggested gun education should start early. He also criticized the Democratic presidential candidates, saying neither Obama nor rival Hillary Rodham Clinton would fight to defend an individual's right to own a gun.
"I'm not sure Senator Obama or Senator Clinton really get it," Huckabee said.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
my brother is no longer a drunk now because he is now in the psych. ward
my new favorite song is called "A - Punk" by vampire weekend.
you can find the video to this song on this blog and you can find the lyrics to this song on their official website.
http://www.vampireweekend.com/lyrics.php
you can find the video to this song on this blog and you can find the lyrics to this song on their official website.
http://www.vampireweekend.com/lyrics.php
some article about tanks and WWII
This article is a little interesting but I think it was poorly written.
anyways, the link to the following article is just below this sentence.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/wwii-strobe-t-1.html
Secret Strobelight Weapons of World War II
By David Hambling May 17, 2008 9:07:00
It might have been the greatest lost weapon of World War II. Major-General JFC Fuller, the man credited with developing modern armored warfare in the 1920's, called failure to use it "the greatest blunder of the whole war." He even suggested that British and American tank divisions could have overrun Germany before the Russians if it had been deployed. I've been looking at a new range of strobing weapons which use flickering lights to subdue criminals and insurgents. But it turns out that the disorienting power of such lights was discovered decades before.
The secret weapon Fuller was referring to was the Canal Defence Light -- a powerful searchlight mounted on a tank, with a shutter allowing it to flicker six times a second. The 13-million candlepower searchlight was intended as means of illuminating the battlefield and dazzling the enemy, described in a fascinating article on the CDL Tanks of Lowther castle:
The angle of the beam dispersion was 19 degrees which meant that if the CDL tanks were placed 30 yards apart in line abreast, the first intersection of light fell about 90 yards ahead and at 1000 yards the beam was 340 yards wide by 35 feet high. This formed triangles of darkness between and in front of the CDL's into which could be introduced normal fighting tanks, flame-throwing Churchill Crocodiles and infantry.
A further refinement was the ability to flicker the light. On the order given for 'Scatter', an armour plated shutter was electrically oscillitated back and forward at about six times a second. When first produced it was thought that this flicker effect (similar to the modern disco strobe lights) would have a damaging effect on the eyes of any observer and might cause temporary blindness.
It was the flickering aspect which made the CDL special. The makes found that when it was employed, it was impossible to locate the vehicle accurately. In one test a CDL-equipped vehicle was driven towards a 25-pounder anti-tank gun; even as it closed from 2000 yards to 500 yards the gunners (firing practice rounds, one assumes) were unable to hit the tank. When asked to draw the route taken by the CDL tank, the observers drew a straight line, while in fact the tank had been crossing the range from side to side.
Spraying the area with machine-gun fire would not work either; the armoured reflector of the searchlight kept working even after being hit repeatedly. Although the CDL did not have the kind of disabling effect that the light-based personnel immobilization device being developed by Peak Beam for the US Army, the type of disorientation seems quite similar. If it had been used at much closer range then more dramatic effects -- dizziness, loss of balance and the ingfamous nausea -- might also have been observed. However, with its mechanical shutter the technology was much more primitive than the strobing Xenon light developed by Peak Beam which produces a 'squarer' pulse and is signficantly more effective than earlier strobes.
Over three hundred CDLs were built -- using Matilda, Churchill and Grant tanks -- and might have played a major role after D-Day. but instead, they remained unused. There seem to ahve been two reasons for this. One the one hand, the power or the CDL was kept extremely secret: "Even the Generals who should have used it did not know what the tank could do," complained its inventor, Marcel Mitzakis. And those that had heard of it had trouble believing at a simple flickering light could have any effect, and preferred to rely on proven weapons. Fuller was one of the few who appreciated what the CDl might have achieved
Another use of flickering lights in WWI was the proposal by Jasper Maskelyne, a stage magician employed by the British military. (A very colorful account of Maskelyne's role is given in the book The War Magician - reading it you might think he won the war single-handed.) The magician was set the task of making the Suez Canal invisible to enemy bombers. When the idea of constructing an illusion using mirrors was rejected as impractical, another plan was formulated, as this site on Maskelyne describes:
Maskelyne came up with the unorthodox idea of constructing 21 'dazzle lights' along the length of the Canal. These powerful searchlights, containing 24 different spinning beams, projected a swirling, cartwheeling confusion of light up to nine miles into the sky. A barrage of light to confuse and blind the enemy bombers, which Maskelyne dubbed Whirling Spray.
Fisher claims that this radical defensive shield of light was highly effective and was a major reason why the Suez Canal remained open for the duration of the war.
However, in spite of claims on the book, they were never actually built, although a prototype was once tested. Is the power of strobing lights just an illusion based on hype, like Maskelyne's whirling spray? Or a significant new weapon which will be ignored or shelved because people are either ignorant of it or don't believe...?
anyways, the link to the following article is just below this sentence.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/wwii-strobe-t-1.html
Secret Strobelight Weapons of World War II
By David Hambling May 17, 2008 9:07:00
It might have been the greatest lost weapon of World War II. Major-General JFC Fuller, the man credited with developing modern armored warfare in the 1920's, called failure to use it "the greatest blunder of the whole war." He even suggested that British and American tank divisions could have overrun Germany before the Russians if it had been deployed. I've been looking at a new range of strobing weapons which use flickering lights to subdue criminals and insurgents. But it turns out that the disorienting power of such lights was discovered decades before.
The secret weapon Fuller was referring to was the Canal Defence Light -- a powerful searchlight mounted on a tank, with a shutter allowing it to flicker six times a second. The 13-million candlepower searchlight was intended as means of illuminating the battlefield and dazzling the enemy, described in a fascinating article on the CDL Tanks of Lowther castle:
The angle of the beam dispersion was 19 degrees which meant that if the CDL tanks were placed 30 yards apart in line abreast, the first intersection of light fell about 90 yards ahead and at 1000 yards the beam was 340 yards wide by 35 feet high. This formed triangles of darkness between and in front of the CDL's into which could be introduced normal fighting tanks, flame-throwing Churchill Crocodiles and infantry.
A further refinement was the ability to flicker the light. On the order given for 'Scatter', an armour plated shutter was electrically oscillitated back and forward at about six times a second. When first produced it was thought that this flicker effect (similar to the modern disco strobe lights) would have a damaging effect on the eyes of any observer and might cause temporary blindness.
It was the flickering aspect which made the CDL special. The makes found that when it was employed, it was impossible to locate the vehicle accurately. In one test a CDL-equipped vehicle was driven towards a 25-pounder anti-tank gun; even as it closed from 2000 yards to 500 yards the gunners (firing practice rounds, one assumes) were unable to hit the tank. When asked to draw the route taken by the CDL tank, the observers drew a straight line, while in fact the tank had been crossing the range from side to side.
Spraying the area with machine-gun fire would not work either; the armoured reflector of the searchlight kept working even after being hit repeatedly. Although the CDL did not have the kind of disabling effect that the light-based personnel immobilization device being developed by Peak Beam for the US Army, the type of disorientation seems quite similar. If it had been used at much closer range then more dramatic effects -- dizziness, loss of balance and the ingfamous nausea -- might also have been observed. However, with its mechanical shutter the technology was much more primitive than the strobing Xenon light developed by Peak Beam which produces a 'squarer' pulse and is signficantly more effective than earlier strobes.
Over three hundred CDLs were built -- using Matilda, Churchill and Grant tanks -- and might have played a major role after D-Day. but instead, they remained unused. There seem to ahve been two reasons for this. One the one hand, the power or the CDL was kept extremely secret: "Even the Generals who should have used it did not know what the tank could do," complained its inventor, Marcel Mitzakis. And those that had heard of it had trouble believing at a simple flickering light could have any effect, and preferred to rely on proven weapons. Fuller was one of the few who appreciated what the CDl might have achieved
Another use of flickering lights in WWI was the proposal by Jasper Maskelyne, a stage magician employed by the British military. (A very colorful account of Maskelyne's role is given in the book The War Magician - reading it you might think he won the war single-handed.) The magician was set the task of making the Suez Canal invisible to enemy bombers. When the idea of constructing an illusion using mirrors was rejected as impractical, another plan was formulated, as this site on Maskelyne describes:
Maskelyne came up with the unorthodox idea of constructing 21 'dazzle lights' along the length of the Canal. These powerful searchlights, containing 24 different spinning beams, projected a swirling, cartwheeling confusion of light up to nine miles into the sky. A barrage of light to confuse and blind the enemy bombers, which Maskelyne dubbed Whirling Spray.
Fisher claims that this radical defensive shield of light was highly effective and was a major reason why the Suez Canal remained open for the duration of the war.
However, in spite of claims on the book, they were never actually built, although a prototype was once tested. Is the power of strobing lights just an illusion based on hype, like Maskelyne's whirling spray? Or a significant new weapon which will be ignored or shelved because people are either ignorant of it or don't believe...?
one good pole lock.
the following article was from the following address:
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/holocaust-hero-who-saved-children-dies/20080512084809990002?icid=100214839x1201983034x1200071364
Holocaust Hero Who Saved Children Dies
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA,
Posted: 2008-05-12 11:34:41
WARSAW, Poland (May 12) - Irena Sendler - a Polish social worker who helped save some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and giving them false identities - has died. She was 98.
Sendler died at a Warsaw hospital on Monday morning, her daughter, Janina Zgrzembska, told The Associated Press. She had been hospitalized since last month with pneumonia.Born in Warsaw, Sendler served as a social worker with the city's welfare department, masterminding the risky rescue operations of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during Nazi Germany's brutal World War II occupation.Records show that Sendler's team of some 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.Under the pretext of inspecting the ghetto's sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Sendler and her assistants went inside in search of children who could be smuggled out and given a chance of survival by living as Catholics.Babies and small children were smuggled out in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages. Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families - most of whom perished in the Nazis' death camps - Sendler wrote the children's real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded."It took a true miracle to save a Jewish child," Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler's team as a baby in 1942, recalled in an AP interview in 2007. "Mrs. Sendler saved not only us, but also our children and grandchildren and the generations to come."After World War II, Sendler worked as a social welfare official and director of vocational schools, continuing to assist some of the children she rescued.In 1965, Sendler became one of the first so-called Righteous Gentiles honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Poland's communist leaders at that time would not allow her to travel to Israel; she collected the award in 1983.Despite the Yad Vashem honor, Sendler was largely forgotten in her homeland. Only in her final years, confined to a nursing home, did she finally become one of Poland's most respected figures, with President Lech Kaczynski and other politicians backing a campaign that put her name forward for the Nobel Peace Prize.Sendler is survived by her daughter and a granddaughter.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-05-12 08:48:34
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/holocaust-hero-who-saved-children-dies/20080512084809990002?icid=100214839x1201983034x1200071364
Holocaust Hero Who Saved Children Dies
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA,
Posted: 2008-05-12 11:34:41
WARSAW, Poland (May 12) - Irena Sendler - a Polish social worker who helped save some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and giving them false identities - has died. She was 98.
Sendler died at a Warsaw hospital on Monday morning, her daughter, Janina Zgrzembska, told The Associated Press. She had been hospitalized since last month with pneumonia.Born in Warsaw, Sendler served as a social worker with the city's welfare department, masterminding the risky rescue operations of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during Nazi Germany's brutal World War II occupation.Records show that Sendler's team of some 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.Under the pretext of inspecting the ghetto's sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Sendler and her assistants went inside in search of children who could be smuggled out and given a chance of survival by living as Catholics.Babies and small children were smuggled out in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages. Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families - most of whom perished in the Nazis' death camps - Sendler wrote the children's real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded."It took a true miracle to save a Jewish child," Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler's team as a baby in 1942, recalled in an AP interview in 2007. "Mrs. Sendler saved not only us, but also our children and grandchildren and the generations to come."After World War II, Sendler worked as a social welfare official and director of vocational schools, continuing to assist some of the children she rescued.In 1965, Sendler became one of the first so-called Righteous Gentiles honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Poland's communist leaders at that time would not allow her to travel to Israel; she collected the award in 1983.Despite the Yad Vashem honor, Sendler was largely forgotten in her homeland. Only in her final years, confined to a nursing home, did she finally become one of Poland's most respected figures, with President Lech Kaczynski and other politicians backing a campaign that put her name forward for the Nobel Peace Prize.Sendler is survived by her daughter and a granddaughter.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-05-12 08:48:34
Sunday, May 11, 2008
this article made me sad.
the following news article was found at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080510/ap_on_re_us/farewell_to_a_town
Pollution brings end to mining town in Oklahoma
By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS, Associated Press Writer
Sat May 10, 1:21 PM ET
PICHER, Okla. - Waiting in their cars or on broken sidewalks, the blue-jeaned crowd has turned out for a parade. But they could pass for mourners at a funeral.
They line up along the main drag in front of empty cafes and shops and rusted mining equipment fenced off with barbed wire. Passing time, some press hands and foreheads against windows of stores that went out of business so many years ago it's hard to remember what they sold.
Two graybeards stand near a telephone pole, watching for any sign of action in front of Susie's Thrift and Gift.
"I hate this," the older one laments. "I hate to see Picher go."
"Yeah," the other mumbles, looking down at his shoelaces.
"All those memories."
"Been mined out pretty bad, though."
___
When the lead and zinc mines all around here closed down, many folks told themselves and promised their kids that Picher could go on and even be the same. There would always be church, high school football and the Dairy Queen.
But that was nearly 40 years ago, and all the praying and wishful thinking can't undo what's happened here.
People are leaving, escaping the reality of life in one of the worst environmental nightmares in the country. A voluntary federal buyout is hastening the exodus.
This is a town's last stand.
"Ol' Picher is just like the rest of us, she's 90 years old and on her last legs," says Orval "Hoppy" Ray, who worked the mines in the 1940s and runs a drafty pool hall in town.
Ray reveals the stubbornness that comes with 82 years of living: He and dozens of other holdouts will not leave, even when there is no city water or police department. No matter how much he's offered for his property, his place will remain open until he's dead.
"I don't think the lights will ever go out," Ray says, but there's something in his voice that leaves room for doubt.
His birthplace is the center of the Tar Creek Superfund site, a 40-square-mile area that also takes in portions of Missouri and Kansas.
For decades, before Picher became a town, miners carved miles of tunnels under its land, and the bounty of lead ore they recovered made bullets for both world wars. Neighboring communities were also undercut.
During its boom, Picher's population peaked at 20,000. Saloons and movie parlors lined the streets.
It was a rough-and-tumble way of life: fistfights just for the heck of it, plenty of bravado and wasted paychecks and the understanding that if you were old enough to work a shift in a mine, you were old enough to down a shot of whiskey.
Picher's mines closed around 1970; the wounds they inflicted on the people and land never healed.
Today, Tar Creek runs orange with acidic water that flooded the mines. Cave-ins and sinkholes threaten; a mine collapse in 1967 took nine homes.
Bleak, gray mountains of lead-contaminated chat, or mine tailings, loom around town. Some rise 100 feet and look like sand dunes. They have names like Sooner, St. Joe and Golden Rod 8.
For years, before most knew better, the gravel-coated piles doubled as sledding hills for kids, a Lover's Lane for teenagers and a makeshift proving grounds for dirt bikes and the high school's track team.
It will take at least 15 more years to haul the stuff off, for use in highway construction projects, but that's not soon enough.
The polluted dust that blows through every nook of this place has already affected a generation.
In the 1990s, a study found elevated blood lead levels in Tar Creek-area children, and teachers began noticing years ago that students were learning more slowly and couldn't focus.
"Don't Put Lead in Your Head," says a sign still hanging next to City Hall, showing a drawing of a smiling child.
Adults suffered, too. Natives like John Sparkman began having high blood pressure in their 20s. He lost his sister to Lou Gehrig's disease when she was 41, and would lay odds pollution caused it.
"I would've liked to have seen the town located somewhere else, but no one wanted to see it happen," says Sparkman, who works for the town housing authority. "It should've ended in the 1960s."
The federal government has stepped in with a plan to relocate residents, a buyout program that could cost $60 million.
As of April, nearly 800 applications had been turned in by home and business owners, according to the Lead-Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust.
More than 300 offers have been made so far and of those, 272 accepted. Only a handful of offers were rejected.
The payouts won't make anyone rich — a 1,200 square-foot home fetches around $60,000 — but most residents believe this is the only ticket out of the depressed area.
The town has been whittled down to 800 people. Most businesses are long gone. The truck stop on the edge of town closed when unleaded was going for $2.79 a gallon. The school system is down to 99 kids and already axed extracurricular activities like band, art and sports.
But there are the holdouts, perhaps as many as 30 families, who plan to stay put.
"They thought they were going to live here for the rest of their lives," says Larry Roberts, a former state lawmaker and operations manager of the relocation trust.
Why would people remain at a major Superfund site?
Candie Crites tries to explain, even as the ground under her feet rumbles almost every day. A mine shaft lies just on the south side of her driveway, 15 feet from her shotgun house in Cardin, a spit away from Picher. When the tremors come, it sounds like a dynamite blast and shakes windows.
But she can't leave the land she's lived on for decades, where the forsythias her parents planted bloom and the best memories with her late husband were made.
"It hurts to see what's going on, it's literally like tearing away pages of your life or layers of your skin," Crites says, sobbing.
Hoppy Ray's son, Steven, is also staying. Stubborn like his old man, the 61-year-old rattles off reasons why he thinks this place can be something again.
What about the city water being turned off? "It will turn into a rural water system."
Or living in a deserted city? "No more lonely than if you lived out in the country."
The lead pollution, then? "I've got four college degrees, and I grew up playing in the chat piles and swimming in the mill ponds. If I'm lead-damaged, by God, what would I have been, another Albert Einstein?"
If 67-year-old Roberta Richards had her way, she'd probably stay, too, but she's afraid to make a go in a town without law and order.
She hopes to get $70,000 for her house and is looking at a new place about 25 miles away. The hardest thing for her will be getting used to life without her daughter and grandkids as neighbors.
Some who left as the mines were closing are still sentimental about the place.
Steve Darnell remembers playing football on a field coated with lead dust and a town big enough to have two hospitals, three movie theaters and a bowling alley.
He sympathizes with the holdouts, but doesn't pretend to know what's in store for them if they stay.
"You can only go so far," says the 55-year-old, who now lives in Missouri. "It's not that much different than a gold-bust town."
___
Sirens cut the silence. Police and fire vehicles have lined up, and it's about to begin now, the parade marking Picher's 90th — and perhaps last — birthday. Something like 300 people have turned out to pay last respects.
"We cry every day," moans resident Louise Blalock, waiting in her minivan for the procession to start. "It's like a death, really."
"For what it is, I'm losing my heritage," says Steven Meador, who moved out of Picher in 1986 and lives in small town nearby.
"I feel like it's the end. That's why I'm here. This is it for me," says Norma Jean Skinner, who made the pilgrimage from California to say a proper goodbye.
Cars, pickups and motorcycles roll by. Locals on the floats toss suckers and Tootsie Rolls into the street, but many of the candies aren't scooped up because there are so few kids left here.
The parade ends at the Paul Thomas Funeral Home.
After the parade, folks gather at the elementary school cafeteria for a reception.
Honky-tonk music sets the mood, and couples get up from bowls of beans and cornbread for one final twirl around the floor.
Paul Thomas, the town's silver-haired undertaker, sits in the back, dressed in a dark suit.
The 84-year-old has buried much of this town and can remember the days when Picher's streets were crowded.
"It's just fading away," Thomas says, looking straight ahead. "It just keeps getting smaller and smaller."
The people shouted, line-danced and swapped stories into the afternoon about first kisses, favorite teachers and long-gone eateries like the Chili King.
For a few more hours, they were the kings and queens of Picher, and no one could tell them this wouldn't last forever.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080510/ap_on_re_us/farewell_to_a_town
Pollution brings end to mining town in Oklahoma
By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS, Associated Press Writer
Sat May 10, 1:21 PM ET
PICHER, Okla. - Waiting in their cars or on broken sidewalks, the blue-jeaned crowd has turned out for a parade. But they could pass for mourners at a funeral.
They line up along the main drag in front of empty cafes and shops and rusted mining equipment fenced off with barbed wire. Passing time, some press hands and foreheads against windows of stores that went out of business so many years ago it's hard to remember what they sold.
Two graybeards stand near a telephone pole, watching for any sign of action in front of Susie's Thrift and Gift.
"I hate this," the older one laments. "I hate to see Picher go."
"Yeah," the other mumbles, looking down at his shoelaces.
"All those memories."
"Been mined out pretty bad, though."
___
When the lead and zinc mines all around here closed down, many folks told themselves and promised their kids that Picher could go on and even be the same. There would always be church, high school football and the Dairy Queen.
But that was nearly 40 years ago, and all the praying and wishful thinking can't undo what's happened here.
People are leaving, escaping the reality of life in one of the worst environmental nightmares in the country. A voluntary federal buyout is hastening the exodus.
This is a town's last stand.
"Ol' Picher is just like the rest of us, she's 90 years old and on her last legs," says Orval "Hoppy" Ray, who worked the mines in the 1940s and runs a drafty pool hall in town.
Ray reveals the stubbornness that comes with 82 years of living: He and dozens of other holdouts will not leave, even when there is no city water or police department. No matter how much he's offered for his property, his place will remain open until he's dead.
"I don't think the lights will ever go out," Ray says, but there's something in his voice that leaves room for doubt.
His birthplace is the center of the Tar Creek Superfund site, a 40-square-mile area that also takes in portions of Missouri and Kansas.
For decades, before Picher became a town, miners carved miles of tunnels under its land, and the bounty of lead ore they recovered made bullets for both world wars. Neighboring communities were also undercut.
During its boom, Picher's population peaked at 20,000. Saloons and movie parlors lined the streets.
It was a rough-and-tumble way of life: fistfights just for the heck of it, plenty of bravado and wasted paychecks and the understanding that if you were old enough to work a shift in a mine, you were old enough to down a shot of whiskey.
Picher's mines closed around 1970; the wounds they inflicted on the people and land never healed.
Today, Tar Creek runs orange with acidic water that flooded the mines. Cave-ins and sinkholes threaten; a mine collapse in 1967 took nine homes.
Bleak, gray mountains of lead-contaminated chat, or mine tailings, loom around town. Some rise 100 feet and look like sand dunes. They have names like Sooner, St. Joe and Golden Rod 8.
For years, before most knew better, the gravel-coated piles doubled as sledding hills for kids, a Lover's Lane for teenagers and a makeshift proving grounds for dirt bikes and the high school's track team.
It will take at least 15 more years to haul the stuff off, for use in highway construction projects, but that's not soon enough.
The polluted dust that blows through every nook of this place has already affected a generation.
In the 1990s, a study found elevated blood lead levels in Tar Creek-area children, and teachers began noticing years ago that students were learning more slowly and couldn't focus.
"Don't Put Lead in Your Head," says a sign still hanging next to City Hall, showing a drawing of a smiling child.
Adults suffered, too. Natives like John Sparkman began having high blood pressure in their 20s. He lost his sister to Lou Gehrig's disease when she was 41, and would lay odds pollution caused it.
"I would've liked to have seen the town located somewhere else, but no one wanted to see it happen," says Sparkman, who works for the town housing authority. "It should've ended in the 1960s."
The federal government has stepped in with a plan to relocate residents, a buyout program that could cost $60 million.
As of April, nearly 800 applications had been turned in by home and business owners, according to the Lead-Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust.
More than 300 offers have been made so far and of those, 272 accepted. Only a handful of offers were rejected.
The payouts won't make anyone rich — a 1,200 square-foot home fetches around $60,000 — but most residents believe this is the only ticket out of the depressed area.
The town has been whittled down to 800 people. Most businesses are long gone. The truck stop on the edge of town closed when unleaded was going for $2.79 a gallon. The school system is down to 99 kids and already axed extracurricular activities like band, art and sports.
But there are the holdouts, perhaps as many as 30 families, who plan to stay put.
"They thought they were going to live here for the rest of their lives," says Larry Roberts, a former state lawmaker and operations manager of the relocation trust.
Why would people remain at a major Superfund site?
Candie Crites tries to explain, even as the ground under her feet rumbles almost every day. A mine shaft lies just on the south side of her driveway, 15 feet from her shotgun house in Cardin, a spit away from Picher. When the tremors come, it sounds like a dynamite blast and shakes windows.
But she can't leave the land she's lived on for decades, where the forsythias her parents planted bloom and the best memories with her late husband were made.
"It hurts to see what's going on, it's literally like tearing away pages of your life or layers of your skin," Crites says, sobbing.
Hoppy Ray's son, Steven, is also staying. Stubborn like his old man, the 61-year-old rattles off reasons why he thinks this place can be something again.
What about the city water being turned off? "It will turn into a rural water system."
Or living in a deserted city? "No more lonely than if you lived out in the country."
The lead pollution, then? "I've got four college degrees, and I grew up playing in the chat piles and swimming in the mill ponds. If I'm lead-damaged, by God, what would I have been, another Albert Einstein?"
If 67-year-old Roberta Richards had her way, she'd probably stay, too, but she's afraid to make a go in a town without law and order.
She hopes to get $70,000 for her house and is looking at a new place about 25 miles away. The hardest thing for her will be getting used to life without her daughter and grandkids as neighbors.
Some who left as the mines were closing are still sentimental about the place.
Steve Darnell remembers playing football on a field coated with lead dust and a town big enough to have two hospitals, three movie theaters and a bowling alley.
He sympathizes with the holdouts, but doesn't pretend to know what's in store for them if they stay.
"You can only go so far," says the 55-year-old, who now lives in Missouri. "It's not that much different than a gold-bust town."
___
Sirens cut the silence. Police and fire vehicles have lined up, and it's about to begin now, the parade marking Picher's 90th — and perhaps last — birthday. Something like 300 people have turned out to pay last respects.
"We cry every day," moans resident Louise Blalock, waiting in her minivan for the procession to start. "It's like a death, really."
"For what it is, I'm losing my heritage," says Steven Meador, who moved out of Picher in 1986 and lives in small town nearby.
"I feel like it's the end. That's why I'm here. This is it for me," says Norma Jean Skinner, who made the pilgrimage from California to say a proper goodbye.
Cars, pickups and motorcycles roll by. Locals on the floats toss suckers and Tootsie Rolls into the street, but many of the candies aren't scooped up because there are so few kids left here.
The parade ends at the Paul Thomas Funeral Home.
After the parade, folks gather at the elementary school cafeteria for a reception.
Honky-tonk music sets the mood, and couples get up from bowls of beans and cornbread for one final twirl around the floor.
Paul Thomas, the town's silver-haired undertaker, sits in the back, dressed in a dark suit.
The 84-year-old has buried much of this town and can remember the days when Picher's streets were crowded.
"It's just fading away," Thomas says, looking straight ahead. "It just keeps getting smaller and smaller."
The people shouted, line-danced and swapped stories into the afternoon about first kisses, favorite teachers and long-gone eateries like the Chili King.
For a few more hours, they were the kings and queens of Picher, and no one could tell them this wouldn't last forever.
i have a soccer game tonight.
i give my thumbs up approval to the new movie Iron Man and to the television show Dexter.
one of the the local tv stations put on toned down version of the first season of dexter, but i was referring to the original dexter that is on one of the cable stations but i forget which station.
i also give my thumbs up approval to the cable television show Weeds.
one of the the local tv stations put on toned down version of the first season of dexter, but i was referring to the original dexter that is on one of the cable stations but i forget which station.
i also give my thumbs up approval to the cable television show Weeds.
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